Manya Chylinski loved the Boston Marathon. She attended year after year, watching as elite runners made their way to the finish line downtown, which she described as a yellow stripe that stretches across the road.

In 2013, Chylinski could see that yellow line as she stood just feet away on a section of metal bleachers set up along the marathon route.

“It’s just so exciting,” she said, describing the annual race as like a citywide party.

That was the scene as Chylinski described it on April 15, 2013, just moments before bombs would explode shortly before 3 p.m., killing three people and injuring hundreds more.

While remaining sympathetic, Chylinski made it clear Thursday morning that those with physical injuries wouldn’t be the focus of her talk at a Cumberland County mental health conference.

There, she addressed a crowd of more than 100 people, telling them about the lasting impact traumatic events such as the bombing or mass shootings can have on those with injuries as well as bystanders who witnessed them.

Chylinski said her experience at the marathon bombing has left her with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

“I’m looking straight ahead and all of a sudden, a bomb explodes across the street from me,” she said, recounting the experience. “And I see people on the other side of the sidewalk running away and I see a cloud of smoke. It’s getting bigger; it’s getting wider; it’s getting taller."

“All I can see is that spot across the street from me,” she said. “I can’t hear anything. I can’t feel anything. I don’t see anybody else around me.”

Moments later, however, her hearing returned. That was when the second bomb exploded, and Chylinski said she turned to see a second cloud of smoke rising skyward.

She also remembered the chaos of getting down from her spot in the bleachers, her dazed walk away from the bombing site and finally sobbing once she was far enough away.

Eventually, Chylinski said, she made it back to her home, where a few days later she’d watch news stories about the bombing, seeing an image of herself in video footage recorded by someone standing on the same bleachers that she was on. It’s a video she played at the conference, which took place at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg in Camp Hill.

What Chylinski said she didn’t see in those newscasts was discussion about the mental health of the hundreds of people who witnessed the attack, many who likely were struggling with what they’d seen just as she was.

“I was, in those first few days, very distressed,” Chylinski said. “I thought of it as something that happened to somebody else that I saw, and that I should just be able to get over it. But pretty soon I learned that I wasn’t getting over it.”

Chylinski described her lack of concentration and her insomnia. When she did sleep, she said, she had terrible nightmares.

And all the time, the continued lack of public attention to those who were struggling emotionally with what they had seen made Chylinski feel “really isolated and really alone,” she said.

Widely circulated stories instead were focused on those known as “Boston strong,” the people who were able to quickly recover from what they had seen and to get back to there day-to-day lives.

There was no “inclusion” or “validation” for people like her, including from the city’s leaders such as the mayor’s office and the police, she said.

“The city continues to behave like those without physical injuries don’t really count,” she said. “We are absolutely second-class survivors.”

Only days after the attack, Chylinski sought help from mental health professionals.

“I knew I was not OK,” she said, explaining she eventually was taken in by a support group for survivors of the bombing.

On Thursday, in the Cumberland County conference room, Chylinski encouraged a different kind of response to mass violence, one that includes support for people like her.

Chylinski spoke as part of the second annual American Mental Health Wellness Association 2019 National Conference, which was attended by more than 100 people from numerous states.

This year, the two-day conference is focused on ending the stigma that mental health is less than or apart from physical health, with American Mental Health Wellness Association Executive Director Sharon Engdahl sharing the message “mental health is physical health.”

“Mental health problems are preventable and treatable just like many other physical medical conditions. Yet, for decades, there has not been a profound push to get this message out to the public,” she wrote in a letter to conference attendees. “Any person experiencing a mental health challenge or crisis should not be subject to the discriminating and prejudicial failings of our society any longer.”

Engdahl’s message ended with a call to action, asking those in attendance and across the country to relinquish their stigmas related to mental health so that “not one more” person in need of help is left without it.